


What Might Be

by Demibel



Category: Next to Normal - Kitt/Yorkey
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, mental health
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 23:11:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demibel/pseuds/Demibel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He hears his father say the words “He’s dead” for the first time when he’s five years old, and he doesn’t quite know what that means yet. But he can tell from the look the doctors give him,that dead is probably not a good thing. He overhears the conversations between the men and white and his mother. How it might better to keep Dan satisfied and believing his delusions than to shock him into re-living the last six years. He’s happy with his daughter, and his wife, and so what if his son is dead? He’s still got a good good life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Might Be

**Author's Note:**

> An alternate universe in which Gabe never died, and Dan is the one suffering from delusions. Dan believes Gabriel is dead, they try to carry on, and his family suffers for it.
> 
> Mostly from Gabe's point of view.

               The first memory he has is one of the hospital. Of a woman in white sticking his arm with a white hot needle and a man with a blue head putting a space mask over his nose and mouth and after that everything is just kinda blurry. A few weeks later, his survival would be proclaimed a miracle and something that beat all the odds. His mother tells him almost every day after that she loves him, that he’s a miracle child, and don’t worry, daddy’s just having a bad day. After a while though, he remembers her not saying it at all, except on special days when he isn’t invisible.

               The first time he sees his mother have an “episode” he’s four years old. Natalie is still just a baby and Diana goes to hand her over to him, and Dan walks in just in time to sweep the baby girl out of Diana’s arms. “Di…love, there’s nothing there. You were going to drop her.” His father explains in a calm voice, while his mother frowns deeply, and Natalie watches with big brown eyes as the first signs of her parents’ insanity start to make themselves known.

               He hears his father say the words “He’s dead” for the first time when he’s five years old, and he doesn’t quite know what that means yet. But he can tell from the look the doctors give him,that dead is probably not a good thing. He overhears the conversations between the men and white and his mother. How it might better to keep Dan satisfied and believing his delusions than to shock him into re-living the last six years. He’s happy with his daughter, and his wife, and so what if his son is dead? He’s still got a good good life.

               His father tries to convince his mother that she’s the one with the mental problems. That Gabe died all those years ago. When he starts his intro to psychology classes at NYU he can calmly explain to his therapist that his father was using a defense mechanism to deal with his son’s near-death experience by projecting his own trauma onto his mother, and his therapist has never had a more interesting and heartbreaking case than Gabriel Goodman. Living sixteen years as someone dead. It was almost a source of pride for the boy, being the best looking zombie he’s ever seen.

               It’s funny, but after a few years of being told you don’t exist, you start to just roll with it. His mother is still “deluded” enough to take care of him enough to keep him from starvation, and he’s resourceful enough to get himself through school and a semi-normal social life on his own. Living life as a delusion isn’t too terrible, all things considered. Sure, his dad hates him for ruining their family, and his sister resents him for being the cause of their parents’ craziness, but Gabe is the strength that his family lacks. Sure, his eighteenth birthday was forgotten by his dad, and tainted by the scary rock star psychotherapist, and barely anyone outside of school knew his name, but hey, at least he was normal. Being the only normal Goodman wasn’t much to boast of, but it was something.

               When he left for school, he thought it would get easier. That maybe by him leaving home it would jolt his father into reality, or maybe make his mother less vulnerable and willing to believe the lies she was fed, and maybe Natalie would feel less invisible. But of course, the Goodmans have always been beyond fixing. His mom left, a barely clean Natalie left for Yale early, and then dad, without the distractions of keeping his family upright fell into his own depression. The first time Gabe visited home, Dan refused to talk to him, to even say his name or look at him until he was getting ready to leave. The next time he visited, Dan had been hospitalized, drugged to the point where he could look at Gabe without calling for someone else. Gabe counted it as a small victory.

               Living as someone who died had been mush easier when that was all he knew. Living as someone who was alive, but invisible was much harder. At least at home, he was a presence, something solid with weight and mass. At school though, he was nothing but a ghost, flitting in and out of the peripherals. Considering his family history, is it really a surprise that he starts seeing a therapist at the ripe old age of nineteen? The doctor he sees prescribes him medication, which he promptly flushes down the toilet. There’s no way he’s going to start popping pills, not after what he’s seen at home. He calls Natalie, who’s taking the semester off to go to rehab with Henry, and it’s the first conversation they’ve had in years without one of them screaming at the other. It’s more refreshing than any session with a therapist could ever be.

               His parents drift in and out of each other’s lives. As dad gets better, mom sightings become more frequent. Gabe likes those visits. Him, and mom and Nat, sitting with dad. It may be awkward, but he’s _there_ , and he’s talked to and seen. He used to be called Superboy, a stupid nickname Natalie gave him when he started high school that stuck. He was told that he could fly, but these days, he’s feeling pretty grounded, heavier, like he’s weighted down by his father’s gaze, and it feels good. He’s never known what it felt like to be real, and the relief that comes with that feeling is just…too much for his own mind to handle. So he’ll just talk it out with his therapist, flush his pills, and wait until his present catches up with his past.

               He’s not Superboy anymore. But he’s happy. And he’s alive. And he’s normal. And that’s the only thing he’s ever wanted. Finally normal.


End file.
